Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS100/TZ100 Review

Key Features

20.1MP 1"-type BSI CMOS sensor

F2.8-5.9, 25-250mm equiv. lens

Depth from Defocus AF

4K/UHD video capture

3" touchscreen LCD

1.2M-dot equiv. EVF

Post Focus / 4K Photo functions

Wi-Fi

As the 1"-type enthusiast compact market has grown over the last 2 years, there has been a noticeable gap in the market. There were small, standard zoom (24-70mm) models and long zooms (24-600mm), but nothing in-between for those who want a longer lens without sacrificing body size.

Enter Panasonic, a company with a long history of making travel zoom cameras. In fact, the company made what many would consider the first one: the DMC-TZ1, way back in 2006. Panasonic entered the 1"-type market in 2014 with its DMC-FZ1000, a camera we liked enough to give it a Gold award.

At this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the company announced the DMC-ZS100 (TZ100 outside of North America), which took the guts of the FZ1000 and shrank the body down to the roughly the size of a Sony RX100 IV. Naturally, you can't stuff a fast 25-400mm lens into a compact body, but the ZS100's 25-250mm equiv. F2.8-5.9 lens is nothing to sneeze at, either. The camera uses the same 20.1MP sensor as the FZ1000 which is more than likely the same as the one in the Sony RX100 II and III.

The ZS100 is chock full of features, most notably its Depth from Defocus autofocus system, 4K video capture and electronic viewfinder. It also has a 3", touch-sensitive LCD, Wi-Fi (but, unlike most Panasonic products, no NFC) and useful 4K Photo and Post Focus features.

Why Pay More?

Imagine you're shopping for a compact travel zoom camera, and you're viewing the selection at a Big Box retailer. You reach the Panasonic section and see the DMC-ZS60, which offers a 30X zoom and costs $450, next to the ZS100 which 'only' has a 10X zoom but costs $250 more. It's not a stretch to imagine a camera buyer asking themselves why they should pay more for what seems like less.

While the ZS60 does indeed have a longer lens than the ZS100, there is a trade-off:

Above is a graph showing equivalent aperture vs equivalent focal length, which is described in detail here. The yellow line at the top is the ZS60 (1/2.3" sensor), while the ZS100 (1" sensor) is in blue below it. In terms of equivalent aperture (which takes into account sensor size), the ZS60 is effectively around 2 stops 'slower' than the ZS100.

This means several things. For one, the ZS100 can capture roughly four times the total light at every focal length, if you keep the aperture open and use the same shutter speed. Since the sensor is gathering more light, you get a better signal-to-noise ratio, which in turn leads to higher image quality. This will be especially noticeable in low light, when the ISO needs to go up.

There's another benefit to having a 1" sensor rather than the 1/2.3" one. The lenses used on larger sensors tend to offer more control over depth-of-field, allowing you for blurrier backgrounds in portraits.

The one area in which the ZS60 bests the ZS100 is in terms of zoom, as you can see by how much further the yellow line extends.

Understanding the math behind all of this is a bit confusing, but the end result is the same: the ZS100 will produce better quality images and can produce more background blur than the ZS60, though you'll have to sacrifice both zoom power and money in order to get it.

Compared to its peers

Using what we've learned from above, let's take a look at how the ZS100 fits among its 1" sensor peers:

In this group, which includes cameras from Sony, Canon and Panasonic, you'll notice that the benefit of shorter, faster lenses: their equivalent apertures start low, and stay low. For example, Canon's G7 X I and II, which have focal ranges of 24-100mm equiv., are 2 stops faster than the ZS100.

The Sony RX10 I/II reaches out to 200mm (not far from the 250mm on the ZS100), but since it has a fixed F2.8 lens, its equivalent aperture is over 2 stop faster than the ZS100 at full zoom. That said, the RX10 I and II are also much larger and heavier cameras. The FZ1000 isn't quite as large as the RX10s and even with its F2.8-4 aperture range, it still has a 1+ stop advantage over the ZS100 for much of its zoom range.

Long zoom cameras sacrifice size for focal range. This is especially the case with the RX10s. Canon's G3 X strays from the group, with its slower F2.8-5.6 lens.

In order to have a 25-250mm equiv. lens in a body that fits in your jacket pocket, Panasonic had to make some compromises. Its lens isn't as long as the large-zoom cameras or as fast as those of the small cameras - instead it's a blend of the two. If the ZS100 had a faster lens like, say, the FZ1000, you'd be looking at a camera nearly as large, which would make the ZS a lot less desirable.

If it feels slippery to you buy some grip tape. Same kind of stuff people use on pistol handles and other things. I bought a sheet, cut it to fit my ZX100 and it's almost like they applied it at the factory. Works for me.

I have it and take it on trips along with my Fuji XT1. The Pan. can be set to 500 or even 1000mm zoom with some settings. 500 mm is all I can handhold. I prefer to use the PAN. because of the size and I'm done with changing lenses. The EVF is small and hard to see especially with bad eyes. Better than none though. With practice, it can be very useful.

I'm a month into a trip in Canada and have been using TZ110 (Australian version of ZS100), and very pleased with it. The 1" sensor is a major step up from the smaller superzooms even though at 250mm reach is limited in comparison. The f2.8 is easily outperformed by my wife's RX100iv but having both means it's not a handicap for us. Other than really low light and distant subjects over a km or thereabouts, the lens yields good sharp images. Satisfactory for regular screen review anyway. So good in fact that my a6300 has had only very moderate use... For those times I wanted the best IQ such as wildlife and the like. So far this camera is getting an A+ from me with few niggles which are mostly around differences from my Sony controls that I'm used to.

The conclusion of the review is somewhat of a leap — IMO, a disjointed conclusion given the remark that the lens isn't as sharp and/or as good at capturing detail as its same-size sensor competitors. I don't see how this could earn a Gold Award except in the sense that the author observes that it doesn't have any direct competition for mid-range zoom in a compact form factor paired to a 1" sensor. As others have remarked, perhaps "sample variation" was at issue (e.g. lens on this camera not representative of what to expect from others). If true, that may mean that this camera does deserve the Gold Award, although it doesn't seem to follow from the test images and sample gallery of the particular DMC-ZS100 reviewed here.

I have had this camera for six months now replacing a Canon G1X. The lens is sharp at all focal lengths, it is an amazing camera with heaps of features, easy to use and quick to start and focus, highly recommended, it makes me to use it more than my FF Sony. The gold award is well deserved.

I called Panasonic tech support, asking whether there has been a lens recall or update, or firmware update related to lens softness. According to the rep there has not been so I wonder where you got the info regarding "...sent it in for a lens change and updated the photos. A few people had that done". I'm still interested in this camera but the question regarding lens softness prevents me from buying. Do you, or anyone reading this reply, know of test results showing lens performance before and after the lens change? Also, do you know when these people sent their cameras in for change (recently?) and was this under warrantee?

a member on seriouscompacts.com provided sample images that looked very good. Asked him about this issue and he said the lens seemed soft and panasonic told him to mail it in. I don't remember exactly what he said they did but it appears, to me and to him, that this was more than a simple lens cleaning. It was as if they returned a new camera with a great lens.

Regardless, his sample images are much better than what DPReview has up. Also, the samples here don't reflect what others have posted on their blogs. It's anecdotal, I know, but there's a 1-2 month waiting list on amazon and I've yet to read anything about a z100 and its awful lens. Don't get me wrong, it's not going to be as sharp as a 2.8 constant zoom and it really is a point and shoot super zoom but I haven't been able to find examples as poor as what DPReview has up. No fault on them, it just seems like they had a bad sample. I'll be picking one up as soon as it becomes available.

Direct battery charge in camera? WONDERFUL -- wish I had it in my GX7. Why? NO MORE POCKETFUL OF EXTRA BATTERIES!!!

Instead, you buy one regular power pack you might buy for your phone, and even a small one like I have will charge your camera three or four times. Get a big one, and you get twice that number of charges out of it.

I was surprised the RX100 was slated for this as it's one of the handiest features, you can still buy a separate charger as you want but being able to use the myriad of micro USB chargers dotted around the house or an external power bank on the go is so handy which I particularly appreciate when hunting for a battery charger I've lost for cameras that don't support USB charging.

I like the power pack idea. I now have 3 batteries and 2 chargers. I rarely use the usb port to charge it but the power pack sounds good. What brand did you buy? I like the idea of taking it along while on a shoot.

I use several power packs made by Anker, as I've been please with both price and performance of their units. Main one is a 2nd Gen Astro E5 unit with 16000 mAh capacity. Haven't tracked how many camera charges it will handle, but it will charge a std iPad and iPhone from 0 to 100 with more to spare, and has two USB charging ports so I can charge phone or ipad and camera(s).

I did not know that the camera will charge whilst on! I have a few powerbanks which charge 1 amp from one USB socket, 2 amp from the other USB (1 amp if both USB sockets are in use). I also have one genuine spare battery, with another battery ordered before I saw this post. So I will 3 batteries in total. My TZ100 can consume battery power if using 4K mode.

I use a big power pack I got at Aldi that can charge either this camera and as well my Sony A7. The convenience of micro USB charging is fabulous, it's not only the power pack but also the phone car charger or whatever other USB power source. My camera included an external charger with an extra battery that I rarely use.

I own this canera and so far I've found nothing to support the negative comments. The zoom is smooth, it's only 'stepped' if you use the lens ring, the traditional (for this type of camera) lever works smoothly; the touchscreen can be turned off if that is what you want; the lens is pin sharp when stopped down to f3.5 or f4; it is not really that slippery to hold. I use the camera mainly in aperture priority with pinpoint focussing rather than zonal.

Today I was in a shop to check a TZ100. First impression: a) The zoom is NOT smoothly continuous but step by step.b) The focus, by touching the screen, is very slow.These aspects, if correct, were not mentioned in the tests.

Zoom can be customised to be step or smooth and controlled on the lever or the lens ring. AF using the touchscreen is easy and super fast. I had this camera for six months and it is a top performer, very happy with it.

In above test, sheet 5, "Raw Performance", there is a photo. Dpreview says "You can download the original Raw file here.". OK. I did it but the file is impossible to open. I tried DxO OpticsPro 11 which gives the following information "Pic cannot be developed since DxO not support the camera used for"! Ricoh GR RAW files (extension .dng) can be opened without problem. I suggest Dpreview to inform in such case which camera has (have) been used.

Love this camera. My only complaint is that there's no way I know of to turn off the touchscreen. I'm extremely left eye dominant (but right-handed) and when holding the camera to my eye and looking through the viewfinder my nose ends up focusing my shot where it contacts the touchscreen. On my Fujifilm X100s the rear screen can turn off when your eye goes to the viewfinder.

The full manual online is actually a feature of the camera itself. There's a screen in the menus that will display either a URL or a QR code for the manual... a feature I'm kind of shocked I had never seen before. Such a simple idea!

The major disadvantage to this is how ugly it is... ugh! Reminds me of those hideous Olympus point and shoots of the 80s... the ones with the motorised zooms. Cameras should be sexy... how can we love them otherwise? Carrying this Lumix around must be like going out with a girl with acne... embarrassing.

You want to take pictures or have sex with camera.The most ugly looking cameras usually have the best picture at least in MF.if you are so sensitive go Leica,not the prettiest but people will say "a rich GF" ;)

Ugly!?! I think it looks fantastic. Do you have one... I'm holding mine right now. The design seems a little influenced by Panasonic's partners at Leica, which is always a good thing. Ok, it's not my OM-D E-M5II, but I love the look. Not that the look should be a big factor in one's camera purchasing decisions.

And sure, I'll admit that as a guy who's been shooting since the 70s, it's the best cameras that, over time, have formed my notion of "sexy camera". Not a shock, really. We all have different turn-ons... what makes a car or a guitar or even an actual human sexy varies from person to person. Cameras are no different.

I prefer form with function. If the function is poor, no matter how good it looks, it would be like a paper weight. I have the TZ100 and it handles fine. This camera takes good pictures with practice. I bought this camera at £120 cheaper than the going rate at The Photography Show, and looks were not top of my wish list.

From what I understand, the TZ110 uses the PAL format by default. The ZS100, on the other hand, uses the NTSC format. In either case, is it possible to switch between these two video formats through the menu system?

Unfortunately nearly all Panasonic cameras are region locked.The GH4 is switchable, the FZ1000 isn't.I ordered my zs100 from the U.S (NTSC model) so I could get 4k in 24fps and 30fps. The TZ100 (PAL model) only does 4k at 25fps.

I have the camera and am generally quite pleased. I shoot raw+jpeg and have used the jpeg images only to transfer to my iPhone for emailing or posting on Facebook. The lens is a little softer than I like but I'm also carrying a Nikon D750 on trips, so the comparison is not fair. Color is decent and I have found it easy to adjust raw images to my preference. I have found some tendency to overexpose and wonder if this is typical of the camera. I often shoot at -0.7 EV to avoid this problem. I don't have to underexpose nearly as often with my Nikon DSLR. Realizing that there will always be compromises with this type of camera, I am reasonably happy with it.

Thanks for mentioning the overexposure issue. I just got this camera and that was really bothering my yesterday. My D3200 was giving me what my eye was seeing and the ZS100 seemed to over expose the brighter areas of the images. I turned off or normalized as many of the image enhancing features (HDR etc.) I could find. I adjusted the exposure compensation but still felt the bright areas were too bright.

I bought the ZS100 about 3 weeks ago when my Sony RX100-III was stolen in St. Petersburg. However it took only about 50 shots to see that the lens was much softer than the RX100-III, both in the center and on the edges at all focal lengths. I took it back and exchanged it for the Leica D-Lux Type 109. What a difference! Luckily, I still have (and love) my Olympus Stylus 1S which is slightly larger than the ZX100, but still much sharper (despite the smaller sensor) and with a better viewfinder. It's a shame you didn't include it in this group of cameras. It's still available (about $700) and its a terrific buy!

I know a lot of folks already really love this camera - but I am unhappy; I guess because I was expecting too much.... With a 1" sensor and a much limited but useful-range zoom, I thought this might be it - a large sensor camera with a sharp, usable wide to moderate telephoto lens. After all, Panasonic makes darned good fixed long zoom lenses, my old ZS15 attests to that.

But, "soft"? "Noise reduction obliterates detail"? This does not sound like the Panasonic I know.... I already get that from my ZS50 - why would I spend so much for what sounds like exactly the same problems? Very disappointed.... going to cry in my corner now.... :\

Your opening sentence made it sound like you own this camera, but apparently your disappointment is based solely on this review. Try reading a few more reviews or better yet, go and try it out at the shops before you pass judgement.

The 1" sensor in the ZS-100 is damn close to what's currently possible in a 1" sensor. Sony makes them -- as they do for Olympus, Nikon, Pentax, and many others. A tweaked up version of this sensor is in the Sony RX-100 IV, not sure if it's much of a difference or not.

There is only so much one can do with pixels this small. The ZS-100 is an improvement over my Fujifilm FH-1 (2/3" sensor, 12MPixel) particularly in low light. It's not a match for my Olympus OM-D EMII (4/3" sensor, 16Mpixel), which in turn is not a match for my Canon 6D (24mm x 36mm sensor, 20Mpixel).

At some point, you need a bigger camera. That's why one is never enough!

currently I have a LF1 and although it has a high aperature I am not satified with the reaction speed, the focal length starting at 28mm and the sharpness/image quality. Now I found this ZS100 (in Germany TZ101). It sound very good with it's 1" sensor and I tested the speed in a shop, which is really good (feeling better then the Casio ZR100 I had before).

When I check all this article and compare it with the ZS60 (which seems to be the TZ81 in Germany) I cannot see much difference in the picture quality on the compare-picture side. Can this be? I can live with 250mm, 385mm would be better, if picture quality and speed is the same. What is the difference, only measureable or also visible?

I sometime find comment on bad lense qualtity and failed sharpness on the ZS100. How can I test it or is it immediatelly visible, if I take a picture from newspaper front side, for example, at different focal lengths?

Mate, the lens on the TZ100 isn't any softer than that on the TZ80 in fact it's sharper than the one I had on the TZ70 (which I believe is the same as the on on the 80) in terms of speed though the TZ100 is noticeably faster to shoot and move around in and IQ is better in almost all conditions. If you have the budget the TZ100 is definitely the one to get.

Many areas, the ZS100 looks a bit better, but NOT in the resolution area of the test chart. ZS60 clearly has more resolution/detail. Sensor , of course is smaller, but ZS100 has MORE resolution, but somehow the detail in some areas is LESS.

ZS60 lens is indeed sharp, and ZS100 seems soft, at least DPReviews sample.Don't compare the TZ70 with TZ80, as TZ80/ZS60 is Faster.

Panasonic actually has same exact manual for both ZS60 and ZS100.Sensor and lens is main difference, but they , for some reason made internal processor and AF with same chip. External controls are a bit better with ZS60, too.

I wasn't going to buy this camera, until more reviews clarified if there is an issue with the IQ. Then I saw Amazon US is selling the silver version for $593, so I went ahead and purchased one. I'm not sure why Amazon is marking down a brand new camera so early except that the silver version, which I actually like best, is not selling well. The free three year warranty upgrade through Panasonic was the icing on the cake. Even if I don't like it, I'm sure I can sell it for what I paid.

After much consideration, I'm planning on ordering this camera. The comment that it's a bit slippery and hard to hold is a concern though. Anyone recommend an aftermarket grip that would be good for this camera (both functionally and aesthetically)?

"Colors lean toward neutral and yellows take on a greenish cast, which can lead to undesirable skin tones."

This is what I have found with Panasonic cameras as well. Colors are not nearly as nice as canon or even Nikon. Both of those companies work hard to deliver natural looking skin tones and colors. Panasonic looks a little like technicolor.

i certainly agree about 2). i purchased a Flipbac FBG3 Camera Grip to help it. also a leather case is coming: if one keeps the top off while in use, the lower piece will help with the grip i am hoping. it may or may not fit well.

I posted above, but: buy yourself a sheet of grip tape. It will take care of the slippy areas for you. People use it on gun grips and such. You can buy different grain, shades, etc. I cut a piece for mine and it looks great and does prevent that slippery feeling.

I've recently bought another R3 as my current one have got bad in the way that it now only uses the slow ccd-AF at the long end of the zoom.I'm looking to maybe add a R5 as well. These two seems to be the best of the first generation Ricoh travel zoom compacts before they renamed it to "CX" I've had a R8 but didn't like it a lot because of the NR problem and slow AF and the R10 is worse as far as image quality go. Ricoh began to lose it with the R6 which no longer had PDAF sensors and also slowly began to use more NR than in the previous models.I've a CX4 which I not use much because of NR problem ther too. Sometimes the noise looks like some weird fog which ruins the pictures. I don't have that problem with the R3.The by now somewhat old Canon Powershot SX230 recently became my choice for travelzoom compact with built in Gps. It almost surely won't beat the R3 for AF speed and uses somewhat more NR. But I don't think it will be to be too bad as a complement to the R3.

Poor usability???And what about those who couldn't care less about "tilt LCD", selfies and NFC? The ZS100 is a serious travel camera, it was not designed for narcissistic gadget lovers. 100% usability, as far as I'm concerned...

I would wager that the lack of a tilt LCD is the desire to keep the camera compact. The LCD panels these days are really thin. The extra casework needed, the hinge, extra would deliver a larger camera. And trying to reduce the size of those is likely to deliver a very breakable camera -- that's why no serious professional cameras include a tilt or flip screen.

I vote for tilt LCD. So useful shooting over crowds or up to trees, buildings etc.The way it is on the Fuji XT2 is brilliant rather than only for landscape orientation or the awkward side hinge.Rather tilt than touch screen in fact.

If you are in your backyard or in a studio, no, you don't need GPS. Or, if you are old enough that you think of GPS as a pointless "novelty" and still use paper maps.

But if you are in the middle of nowhere, like a jungle, one of hundreds of islands, or wilderness, or some village the name of which you can't pronounce, then you need GPS. And if you upload to any major cloud site, it will nicely map your route and years from now, you'll know where that unnamed village was.

" if you are old enough that you think of GPS as a pointless "novelty" and still use paper maps."

The battery on my paper maps and mechanical compass have never run out. It's surprising the number of idiots who head off into the wild/hills/mountains with only a mobile phone and gps. I've helped a fair few in my time.

@Macist: From what I read at the time, the "travel" term originally defined a camera that had a large-range zoom (~10x) wide-angle-to-telephoto lens - which is the ideal lens for a tourist when travelling.

With wide-angle, you could photograph groups of people, and broad scenes such as marketplaces; and then with the telephoto, zoom in to more distant objects such as church spires, and mountains; all without having to carry a range of lenses, and continually switch between them.

In fact, I bought a "travel" zoom (eqiv 28-280mm) for my non-"travel" GF1, for just such situations.

While I take your point that GPS is a useful feature for those travelling abroad who wish to tag their photos, I don't see any evidence that the GPS feature defines that, or any, market segment.

I do have a camera which has GPS on it - an FT4 - but its 4x zoom range means it is not really suitable as a travel camera.(And I turned the GPS off as soon as I bought the camera, to preserve battery life).

Personally, I don't really care about GPS for my travel cameras. I generally know where I am in the world, and in the end the picture is what counts, not the specific coordinates of its location.

Seems like GPS would be a big battery drain. I guess it's nice as a novelty to know exactly where an image is taken, but it would never be a make or break for me, unless it ties in to awesome other features like Pentax's Astrotracer.

I actually prefer the Olympus solution - the camera links to an app on my smartphone to sync up on GPS information. And the main reason for that is that GPS on-camera can be kind of a boondoggle. I have this on my Canon 6D but rarely use it. The 6D leaves GPS on when enabled, because it takes awhile to get a GPS lock, and it would be unacceptable to wait for that lock before you could shoot. So GPS is on even when the camera is switched off. That means that, when you go back to that camera a day or to later, the battery is dead unless you remembered to switch if off (via menus) before putting it away.

Sure, maybe a better implementation exists. But I have my phone anyway, so why not do that sync? Its also an easy addition to the camera and app -- "a simple matter of software" as we hardware people say.

It is laughable how dpreview has started to use the "equivalent", making it circular-reasoning.

If they would like to do it accurately, fair and scientifically, they would use angle of degrees for field of view and then just state the sensor physical size in mm by width/height/diagonal. Nothing about "equivalency".

@Mike FL: It wasn't at all. Equivalent aperture is a sensible measurement. The way dpreview does it, it shows very well what to expect from a camera in real life, and it is a good thing that it contradicts the delusion many people still have that F-number x would constitute the same value, the same benefit, no matter what size the sensor is.

And when you know that fact, you can work with any camera regardless any conversions to any "magical FF standard".

If you know what is the sensor diameters, you know what is then the standard focal length for it. And once you know that, you can calculate every possible focal length for wanted field of view or depth of field as easily as 1+2=3.

The problem is that people doesn't even understand what difference is between 50mm, 100mm and 135mm. They have no idea what f/4 means compared to f/5.6. No idea what it means when subject is at 5m or 2.5m.And equivalency doesn't help in that at all.

Like if I ask about you, what aperture I need to use to get a 18mm size subject in focus at 2m distance and in a landscape photo where infinity is in focus as well, the most likely answer that is given is wrong (= hyperfocal distance).

And focal length is same value! It is a God damn physical property! Unless you start describing lenses by AOV-only in your posts, I'm calling you a hypocrite.

Really, people have no idea what 50 and 100 mm means? People have no idea that a larger number means a larger magnification? People have no idea that 100 mm is twice 50 mm?

If people have no idea about f-stops, then according to your logic they shouldn't be mentioned at all. Which makes is rather hard to talk about one camera might be better than another. Or should DPreview simply class cameras as 'very fast', 'fast', 'medium', 'slow', and 'very slow'?

But your solution is even more daft. For once, people have no idea about focal lengths and even less about f-stops and that is why we should provide them with sensor & aperture diameter? So, to prevent that people might misunderstand something only present information that they do not understand because if they do not understand somethingl, they cannot misunderstand it.

@Rusk: "F-number is same value! It is a God damn ratio value! Nothing else!" – yes, it's the same number, but the problem is that the same number does completely different things with different sensor sizes, and that's what counts. So the value (as in "worth", not as in "number") of the same F-Number is completely different for different sensor sizes, and that's what dpreview's equivalent aperture diagrams visualize very well.

@noirdesir, even you failed to know what difference is between 50mm and 100mm, doing same mistakes as every equivalency talker.

There is a reason why decades ago there weren't any reasons for these "eq to X" because people understood the values and properties.

It seems that digital era has rendered people just not to gasp the properties of values and effects and some try to get around with some talks making just everything more difficult to ever understand because they can't anymore see out of the box the whole process.

And the majority never even knew different formats, they knew just different size cameras when they saw it. They just loaded a 135 roll to camera with wanted ISO they were sold in store and shot happily by sliding lens open, pressing a single shutter button and then looked the amount of frames they had left.

They never did handle different focal lengths, different apertures or anything like that.

All the talks about equivalency is self-prophecy, a circular reasoning. "You need to talk about equivalency, because otherwise you don't understand equivalency, so you can talk about equivalency".

While skilled photographers they didn't need the equivalency talks because they understood everything at glance.

In the first part of your post, you state what the definition of the f-number ratio is.You also go on to say that most people don't even understand the components of that ratio - focal length and aperture diameter - which certainly validates both yours and DPReview's concept that explaining a camera's performance in terms of f-numbers is pointless.

Yet, you are also arguing that DPReview's approach to explain the relative performance of cameras in terms users can understand - rather than in terms that we have all agreed they don't understand - is "laughable".

There appears to be an error with the studio scene test for this review. The panning magnification is set to greater than 100%, at least for ISO 125 (looks nearer to 150%). I noticed this when I downloaded and opened the jpeg, which is smaller and therefore looks sharper.

After reading the verdict, I wanted to order the camera straight away, but then I thought I should at least have a quick look at the studio scenes – and I was aghast; the wish to buy the camera immediately evaporated.

Now that I've read other reports, seen other results and downloaded some of the RAW files from the dpreview samples, which develop rather nicely in Silkypix Pro 7, that wish slowly returns...

you are 100% correct, the studio scene file looks very bad and there's definitely something wrong there. I've had all the RX100 series, a G5X and an FZ100 (also a Leica typ109) and the difference between all of these is negligible (with the exception of the noticeably softer G5X). This camera is the best compromise for a holiday shooter, small, fast enough on the wide end and versatile enough to isolate subjects in most situations while travelling, a winner in my experience.

I'm also wondering if there may be a problem with DPR's sample of this camera. There are downloadable RAW files now of Imaging Resource's TZ100 test scene on their Web site and, in an ISO-for-ISO comparison with the Nikon J5 (using ACR 9.5), there is very little between the two cameras using IR's samples but they are worlds apart in the same comparison using RAW files downloaded from DPR. Admittedly, DPR tested the J5 with the Nikkor 1 32mm and IR used the 18.5mm, but they are both sharp lenses. So I'm not sure I understand why the DPR images with the TZ100 are so soft and hazy when comparing RAWs because DPR's images aren't. Not to my eyes anyway. Puzzled!

I've had this camera several days, and have to say I'm pretty impressed. I took it up in a helicopter at work yesterday evening around dusk and was able to shoot orcas in Puget Sound in moderately low light through helicopter Windows from ~800 feet altitude and still got some usable shots! I also shot some Seattle skyline from the air at sunset, again through moving helicopter windows, and got some surprisingly decent sharp/steady shots. The image stabilization clearly works, and works quite well! These are some of the most challenging photo situations I could throw at it, and it delivered incredibly well for a compact. Is it as sharp as DSLR or micro four thirds or other larger camera, or is the bokeh as pretty, or does it have amazing shallow DOF? No. But it fits in my pocket, shoots steady in bouncy conditions, has an impressive zoom, and is darned nice enough in a compact size! Despite owning several better cameras, I am betting this is about to become my most used, easily.

Is there any difference between lumix ZS100 and TZ100 other than that ZS100 being sold in North Amerkia. Will there be any encounter any difficulty using the camera in Norway redading contacts or other things.

Do not worry as they issue new versions they give them different numbers to correct this current aberration. For a short period people either side of the Atlantic will have some idea of which equivalent camera we are talking about but I am sure Panasonic will fix that in due course.

It was 2 years ago when Sony introduced a quality EVF in a very compact camera. Sorry but it is not acceptable, since even it is worse. I do highly rely on DPR's editor's comment. And you are right about the instant issue, maybe it is the trade-off.

Olympus is putting 4/3: sensors in this same class of camera -- well, at least the RX100 class, since is the first 1" long-zoom compact (aka travel zoom). No special reason they would change back to 1".

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